As I near the end of my first year at Johnson, I find myself in a reflective mood. I’m twenty-five years old. Statistically speaking, I’m somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the way through my life. In the time I’ve been here, I’ve done many things of which I am proud and a few of which I am ashamed. I’ve enjoyed my time being alive and feel I’ve used it well thus far. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things to help me going forward, sometimes by luck and others by trial and error. I’ve met some very interesting people and experienced some wonderful things. And I’ve been hard on myself, far harder on myself than anyone should ever be on himself.

I’m not alone in that. I’m surrounded daily by people who do the same, people who push themselves to unreasonable limits, who contort themselves into unnatural shapes in an attempt to find some sort of validation. It’s an easy habit to fall into, but I’m trying very hard to avoid it. You see, I’m on the verge on a new stage in my life, one that is going to challenge me in ways that I’ve never been challenged. In the face of these challenges, I think it’s important to know who I am and what I believe. If I don’t know that, then I don’t know anything, and never will.

I have enjoyed growing up, and I continue to enjoy it. My impression is that this sentiment is rare. I often hear people say, “I’m not ready to grow up,” “I’m okay not being a grownup for a while longer,” “I just want to enjoy being young while I can.” That’s never made sense to me. It makes even less sense when I hear it from people older than me. I lead a rich, satisfying life, and that has not come from clinging to adolescence. Maybe I’ve been too aggressive about it occasionally – I haven’t so much drifted into adulthood as forcefully charged into it. But I can’t fathom living my life any other way. I get no enjoyment from all-day parties and late night bar crawls. Whether by choice, experience, or nature, those things don’t speak to me, and never have. I know that about myself. It makes it easier, growing up.

I struggle sometimes with how much of myself to share online. Share too little, and you’re a stiff professional with no personality. Share too much, and you’re indulging in the Internet’s destructive excuse for a support system. I wonder if this dilemma will exist a few years from now, when our social mores have undergone a further shift. For now, though, it makes it difficult to know where the line is. I try to adhere to a simple rule: share less online than you would face-to-face.

I know I would tell you this and more, if we were to meet in person, so I am happy to share it with you now: I am happy to be an adult. I’m sure I appear overly serious and occasionally boring. I don’t particularly care. I’m happy being an adult, happier than I was being a teen, and more fulfilled than I was as a college student. I’m happy pursuing things that most people wouldn’t pursue, happy setting priorities most people wouldn’t set. I still have fun with friends, still enjoy myself, but the terms have changed, as they are wont to do, and I am fine.

So it goes.

The new iPad’s Retina display is genuinely stunning, the best I’ve ever seen, but it has spoiled me. Apps that haven’t been updated for it just don’t look right. Noteshelf, unfortunately, is one of them. The problem is that Noteshelf had become a crucial element of my workflow over the last few months. I kept waiting for its developer to release an update, but started watching its competitors as well. Last week, one of them came through.

Notability, by Gingerlabs, has been around for a while, and earned a reputation as a solid productivity tool. Its latest update brought with it full support for the Retina display, and made it the single best notetaking app I’ve ever used.

I think it’s imortant to explain why I need a dedicated notetaking app. I’m sitting in class sessions for a good chunk of every week, listening to lectures that I’m expected to remember. A lot of my classmates try to retain information by typing it into their computers or iPads for future reference. I’ve done so myself, but the problem is that when I take notes that way, I’m doing it so that I can come back to them later. I’m not actually learning when I do that; I’m making appointments to learn later.

That’s not the purpose of taking notes, at least not for me. To steal Field Note’s tagline, I’m not writing things down to remember them later; I’m writing them down to remember them now. For me, typing doesn’t equal retention, and no matter how detailed my notes may be, I always have to come back to them to understand the lecture I’ve just sat through.

When I take notes by hand, I’m much more selective about what I write, and can recall it much more easily later. I remain engaged in the lecture as I hear it, and walk away from it with a greater understanding of the material. It’s a system that works better for me, but the problem with it is that I hate keeping track of notebooks. That’s why Noteshelf was such an appealing solution, and it’s why Notability works so well for me now.

Notability’s flow and responsiveness make my stylus feel like a fountain pen. It’s digital ink is second to none, on par with Fifty Three’s Paper app. It’s wonderful to use and adaptable for a variety of contexts. It’s also a great tool for marking up PDFs – something I have to do quite often, thank you HBR readings. Most of all, it does what all great iPad apps do – it gets out the way and lets me do what I need to do. It makes the device invisible, leaving only the experience, and for that, I love it.

Notability is available on the App Store. If you’re someone who prefers the experience of taking notes by hand but wants to cut paper out of your life, give it a try.

All Das Keyboard reviews say pretty much the same things. It’s big. It’s loud. It’s kind of ugly. It types like a dream. I agree with all of those statements. I’d held off on reviewing mine, partially because I was still getting used to it, but mostly because I wasn’t sure what I had to say that hadn’t already been said. Now I know: I wouldn’t own the Das Keyboard if it weren’t for my iPad.

The Das Keyboard can’t work with the iPad. It’s a wired keyboard, not a wireless one, and it needs two USB ports to function. (Other USB gadgets can plug into the side of the keyboard.) But its utility to me comes from how this current version of the iPad has changed my workflow and my beliefs about what my computing needs will be going into the future.

Shawn Blanc had a great post up last week where he wrote, “My MacBook Air is now my “desktop” and my iPad is now my “laptop”.” These are the lines I’ve been thinking on as well. My MacBook Pro, for all intents and purposes, has become a desktop computer. I don’t take it out with me anymore. Everything I used to need it for on the road, the iPad can now do. Why carry the extra weight?

It’s still a useful machine, but the jobs I hire it to do these days are very different than they were even a year ago. Media editing and management remains its primary task, but writing is a close second. And when I think about what this machine will do going forward, I think that’ll be the majority of it.

Writing on the iPad is still a little tough. A Bluetooth keyboard makes it easier, and I’ve written plenty of school assignments on it, but at this stage, it’s a machine for libraries or coffee shops. If I’m out and about, it’s what I need, but if I’m going to write for extended periods, I want to be home, I want to be alone, I want to draw the blinds, I want a cup of coffee at my side, and I want a bigger screen. If computers are increasingly becoming machines for dedicated tasks, my MacBook Pro is still my dedicated writing machine.

My writing workflow is continually evolving. Until about a year ago, I used Word like everybody else. Then I switched to Pages, which I used on both my Mac and iOS devices to compose my business school reports. Most of my longform writing takes place in iA Writer these days, although this post was composed in Byword. When I’m sitting down to write, I just want to write. And when writing becomes the primary task of a machine, I think it’s important that the machine be as well-suited to that task as can be.

The MacBook Pro that I own was purchased in July 2011. It’s the spring 2011 unibody model with a 13″ screen and a built-in backlit keyboard. All things considered, it’s not a bad keyboard. I’ve seen people refer to it as the Chiclet keyboard, given that each key is about as thick as a piece of gum, but it did a good job for what was essentially a general purpose machine.

Now, though, I open my MacBook Pro when I want to write, and when you’re writing thousands of words a day, the built-in keyboard starts to feel a little less comfortable. Apple’s own Bluetooth keyboard doesn’t feel much better. Still, I didn’t think much of buying a replacement until I started hearing about the Das Keyboard. I believe Chairman Gruber mentioned it on an episode of The Talk Show, and was intrigued by the concept.

The key to the Das Keyboard is its use of mechanical switches. The current Apple keyboard features scissor-switch keys, which uses two pieces of interlocking plastic to trigger the typing command on the computer. The advantage of the scissor-switch key is that it is very compact, which is why you commonly see it in laptops. But back when I was young and old people were my age, mechanical-switch keys were the gold standard in keyboards. Rather than sending a specific signal through a unified keyboard membrane, mechanical-switch keys each feature a standalone physical trigger. This means that each key requires more force to depress. However, the feedback you get from each press is infinitely more satisfying.

The Das Keyboard, like the Apple Extended Keyboard before it, uses incredibly loud mechanical switches. The sound of the keys, coupled with the physical feedback felt with every press, results in a much more fulfilling typing experience than Apple’s scissor-switch model. Regardless of what you’re typing, you feel better about typing when using a mechanical keyboard. Your words flow more naturally, your fingers move more freely, and the experience of writing on your computer is easier, more enjoyable, and more satisfying. That may seem small to someone who just types emails or URLs, but to an aspiring novelist, it’s a huge deal. It’s also something I wouldn’t have thought of before my desktop – err, laptop – became a dedicated writing machine.

I mentioned in a previous post that I didn’t know if I’d ever buy a laptop again. The Das Keyboard is giving me one more reason to doubt that I will. An iMac or Mac Mini seems much more likely at this stage, as I continue to delegate which tasks I would like which computing device to perform. Thanks to the iPad, having a mobile Mac is becoming less of a priority for me, and it’s in the dedicated desktop environment toward which I am moving that the Das Keyboard will be an asset.

And like I said, it types like a dream.